Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (14 page)

DUSENGE WASN’T IN HER ROOM, so I lay quietly with my eyes shut. I’d barely slept in days, but I still couldn’t nod off. My mind drifted over the events that had led me to the pastor’s house. I saw my family sitting around our radio not knowing what to do. I envisioned my mother’s ashen face as she slept outside to protect me. I remembered my father standing in front of thousands of frightened people trying to encourage them. And I recalled the machetes in the killers’ hands on the road to the pastor’s.

As my thoughts swirled, I heard Damascene’s excited voice and sat up with a start. I thought I’d been dreaming, but I wasn’t. I definitely heard my brother talking to someone just outside the bedroom. A few seconds later, he was in the room with me.

“Damascene, what’s happened? Where are Mom and Dad?”

“I don’t know, Immaculée. We were separated, and they had to run away.”

“Why? What happened?”

“They burned it down.”

“What? Who burned what down?”

“The killers . . . they burned down our house. It’s gone.”

I sank back on the bed. My father had just finished our home, which he’d built for my mother with his own hands. It was to be their retirement castle, and seeing it destroyed would have broken his heart.

“Does Dad know about the house?”

“Of course he does—they burned it down in front of him,” Damascene said. And then he proceeded to fill me in on everything that had happened at home in the few hours since I’d left. Apparently our father had refused to believe that the government was behind the killings, so he drove to see Mr. Kabayi, the burgomaster, to ask for protection.

“But Kabayi tried to starve Dad in prison,” I interrupted. “What was he thinking?”

“He said that he had no choice,” Damascene continued. “The killers were all around the house, and more kept coming. Dad felt responsible for the people who’d come to him for help, so he went to Kabayi to beg for protection. He told the burgomaster that there were thousands of Tutsis at our house and asked him to send as many soldiers as he could.”

Damascene said that Mr. Kabayi told my father not to worry and sent two soldiers to escort him home. But everything turned ugly when they got there.

“The soldiers started mocking Dad. They laughed at him and asked, ‘What kind of idiot are you? How stupid can you be, thinking that the burgomaster sent us to protect you and all the cockroaches? These cockroaches need to be exterminated!’”

At that point, Vianney came into the room. Both of my brothers had been traumatized: Damascene was pale, and Vianney’s face had a hollow, haunted expression. Damascene’s voice was strained as he told me what happened next.

“The soldiers fired their guns in the air to rally the killers . . . and the killers came running, screeching like animals and waving their machetes. The Tutsis who’d been staying near our house began screaming so loudly that it was like listening to a giant flock of screeching crows. They ran in all directions, thousands of them in total panic.

“Dad, Mom, and Vianney all backed away from the house. I followed them, making sure that the killers didn’t charge at us. The soldiers turned to the killers and yelled, ‘This house is full of cockroaches—fumigate it! What are you waiting for? You have a job to do! It’s time to stomp these cockroaches!’

“That’s when the killers went berserk. They broke into the house, smashed everything, and set fire to the car. Whatever they didn’t smash, they looted . . . and then they torched the house. In less than five minutes, it was completely swallowed up by flames. Dad collapsed on the ground—he just passed out—he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d told people that things would get better, but now he saw that he was wrong, and that it was too late to do anything about it. His whole life was burning up in front of him.

“We helped him down the road to where he’d hidden his motorcycle, and he got on. He made Mom climb onto the seat behind him. Since the killers were going crazy, we didn’t have time to talk, think, or even say good-bye. Dad yelled, ‘Run! Go to Pastor Murinzi’s and find your sister. I have to get your mother away from here. Hide—we’ll find each other later!’

“Mom was crying into his shirt. She looked at us and said, ‘My boys . . . what will become of my boys?’ That’s all I heard her saying over the motorcycle engine. Then they were gone.”

“But where did they go?” I asked, heartbroken.

“I don’t know—maybe to Aunt Cecile’s house or to one of the churches for shelter. It was so confusing . . . we were in a stampede. Thousands and thousands of Tutsis were running for their lives—toward the mountains, the forest, the swamp, and the stadium. But Immaculée, I think that no matter where they go, there will be killers. They’re everywhere, and now we don’t even have a home to hide in.”

I was speechless, but I felt as if I had to give my brothers something to look forward to. “Look, we lost our house, but our home will be wherever we are together,” I said, with as much hopefulness as I could muster. “We’ll all move to the city—we’ll go to Kigali and start over.”

Both of my brothers looked at me as though I were insane. “Immaculée, what are you thinking?” Damascene asked in irritation, sounding fed up with my optimism. “The killing is going on all around us. We passed dead bodies on the road coming here, and most of them are people we know!
We’re trapped.
”

He looked at me with an expression I’d never seen on his face before. I didn’t know what it was: accusation, disappointment, anger? And his next words stung like a whip: “Why did you keep telling us all along that things were going to be okay?”

A wave of guilt rolled over me. Had my optimism led my brothers and parents into this nightmare we were living in now? Was I responsible for their fate? What else could we have done, since Dad wouldn’t leave, and everything had happened so fast? Should I have despaired, sunk into depression, or become hysterical over our plight? That would have made matters worse. People need hope to survive.

I refused to believe that God had made us Tutsis only to have us slaughtered. But here was Damascene, whom I loved so dearly, looking at me with anger and despair. “I’m sorry,” I said through tears. “But all we have left is hope, so let’s hold on to it. We can’t give up yet. Remember, you promised to come to my graduation next year. We can make it through this.”

“You really think so?” my brother asked, showing me his shining smile again, but sounding unconvinced.

I didn’t know if we’d even make it through the night, but I summoned up all the conviction I could manage. “Sure, Damascene, we’ll make it.”

“Okay, I won’t give up hope if you don’t,” he said, and turned to Vianney.

“You better stay with Augustine because he’s very frightened. And whatever happens,
do not
leave this house—and don’t let Immaculée leave. There are murderers and rapists everywhere. Promise me you’ll do that.”

“I promise,” our baby brother said.

Then Damascene announced: “I’m not going to stay here. I know that the pastor doesn’t like Dad, and I can tell he doesn’t like me either. Besides, too many people saw me come here, and that may lead them to you.”

I pleaded with him to stay with us, but he wouldn’t change his mind. His good friend Bonn lived nearby, so Damascene said he was going to stay with him. Bonn was a Hutu, so he might be able to hide my brother for quite a while.

I walked Damascene to the porch, but it was too painful to talk to him. We’d never parted company without saying “See you soon” or “See you in a few weeks.” Now I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye, knowing that this could be the last time I’d ever look at his beautiful face.

My brother, my soul mate, put his hands in mine, and they felt soft and light as feathers. No matter how hard I squeezed them, I couldn’t feel the weight of his palms against mine—it was like holding the hands of a disappearing soul. My heart felt like it was exploding.

We stood staring at each other silently until Damascene gently pulled his hands away, smiled sadly, and stepped through the gate.

CHAPTER 8

Farewell to the Boys

N
ot long after Damascene left, there was a knock on the pastor’s front door. I heard the voice of Nzima, one of Vianney’s high school teachers, asking for Pastor Murinzi. There was a muffled conversation, and then the door closed. I went out back and found Nzima sitting alone in the deep shadow of the pastor’s shade tree. Even in the poor light, the pain on his face was easy to see.

He sounded like a frightened child: “What will they do? Do you think that they’ll kill us?”

When I heard him at the door, I selfishly hoped that he’d be able to offer me words of comfort and give me strength, but it was he who desperately needed both.

Nzima told me that his wife and children were visiting his motherin-law in a distant village. He had no way of knowing if they were safe, and he was tortured by the uncertainty. “I have visions I can’t rid myself of,” he said. “I see my wife and babies being slaughtered, cut up in front of me. And I can do nothing to stop it. For all I know, they’re lying dead in the road right now.”

I tried to console him as best I could, but what could I say? How many times could I tell someone that things were going to be okay when I wasn’t sure what was going to happen myself?

He sighed deeply. “Where can I go? Everybody has a machete out there, and I saw others with guns.”

“Stay here until the killing stops, and then you’ll find your family,” I said, hoping to buoy his spirits.

He shook his head and stood up. “I won’t be staying here, and there’s nowhere else for me to go, my child.”

“I will pray for you.”

“Thank you, Immaculée.”

He said good-bye and walked to the front yard, where Pastor Murinzi was waiting. The pastor must have told Nzima that he couldn’t stay because when he pointed to the gate, Nzima walked through it without saying a word. Later I heard that the poor man was hacked to death just a few hundred yards down the road from the pastor’s house.

A couple of hours later, I was alone in a small bedroom when Pastor Murinzi quietly ushered five other Tutsi women in. I recognized all of them from the area but knew none of them well.

The pastor was agitated as he brought them into the room. “Hurry, hurry! You must hurry! And be quiet!” He was muttering so quickly and quietly that we barely heard him.

“Wait here, and keep quiet,” he said, shutting the door behind him as he left.

And there we were, six Tutsi women who were virtually strangers to each other, except for two things we had in common: We were hunted, and we had nowhere else to hide. We stood looking at each other, too frightened to speak or even introduce ourselves. We didn’t know what was happening outside, but judging from the pastor’s nervousness, things were bad.

Suddenly there were screams outside the house—blood-curdling shrieks that made the hairs on our arms stand up.

Then the horrible, angry voices came, yelling, “Kill them! Kill them! Kill them all!”

There was more screaming and cries for help, followed by, “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”

We panicked. Several of the women dived to the floor and hid under the bed. I was trembling so hard that I thought the floor was shaking. My eyes scoured the room for a place to hide, zeroing in on a small crawl space in the ceiling.

“We can hide up there,” I whispered, dragging a chair beneath the hole and scrambling up. I pulled another woman up, and together we hoisted the others through the hole. Then we waited for the pastor to return. We crouched in that cramped, stifling space until our clothes were soaked with sweat and we were gasping for air. Two hours later, Pastor Murinzi came back. He stood in the middle of the room and scratched his head with a stunned look on his face.

“Where are they? My God, I left them right here!”

I would have laughed if I wasn’t so frightened. “We’re up here!” I whispered, popping my head out of the hole.

The pastor shook his head, then told us to come down immediately so that he could talk to us. His face was still very troubled. “I know that you’re all scared, and you should be,” he said. “It’s gotten out of control out there. The killers are going into
everyone’s
homes. They haven’t come inside mine today, but they could at any time. Honestly, I don’t know what to do with you . . . I have to think it over.”

He must have seen our panic, because he came up with a solution very quickly. “Don’t worry, I won’t turn you out,” he assured us. “But you must listen very carefully. Early tomorrow morning, before anyone is awake, I will take you to another room, where you’ll stay until the killing stops. I will tell everyone in the house that I have sent you away. I’ll be the only one who knows you are here. Idle gossip could get us all killed. I’ve seen these killing sprees before—once the bloodlust is in the air, you can trust no one, not even your own children. If one person discovers you, you’re finished! And by God, I don’t want your blood in my house or on my hands.”

Then the pastor turned to me and said words that cut me like a knife: “Your brother and his friend can’t stay here. They must leave and fend for themselves. It’s too dangerous for me to protect men. As it is, you women are already too many for me to hide.”